Hi friends! It’s WIP Wednesday—the first Wednesday of the month, when I share an excerpt of a work in progress and invite you to do the same in the comments section below. If it’s rough, that’s fine. That’s the “in progress” part! We don’t critique anything, but encouraging words to fellow authors are good karma. Please keep your excerpt under

Many writers love setting daily word count goals. It’s not for me, because days can vary so wildly. On one day, I might get a ton of writing done. On another day, I might have to drastically rewrite something, or take my dog in for emergency surgery, like we had to do last week. (He’s making a good recovery!) I

Hey friends! A month or so ago, a reader named Katy told me that she was finding my book Master Lists for Writers “brilliant with helping me not overthinking about specifics.” Yay! She asked if I had ever done a list of descriptions of voices. I had not! I’m a huge proponent of engaging all of the readers’ senses,

Hey there! Late last week I did a poll to ask you what I should work on for NaNoWriMo. To be honest, I had planned on starting the second book of a paranormal romance/urban fantasy trilogy, but I had begun to ask myself things like, “Would anyone but me get into this trilogy concept?” (Arguably a better question to ask

In the month of November, hundreds of thousands of people will participate in National Novel Writing Month, in which they attempt to write fifty thousand words of a novel. And like every year, people will write blog posts and columns about why they hate NaNoWriMo. To be clear, NaNoWriMo is not for every writer. Not everyone likes to write fast –